As we mark Lung Cancer Awareness Month, it is a time to acknowledge that screening and prevention are vital, and equally crucial is ensuring that patients have access to state-of-the-art care and research. Herein, I spotlight some of the transformative work underway at City of Hope.Â
Over the past three decades, cancer genetics has transformed precision oncology. Germline testing has advanced from single-gene Sanger sequencing to parallel sequencing of hundreds of genes, while tumor (somatic) testing has expanded with the rise of targeted therapies based on point mutations, copy number changes and other alterations.Â
Nearly five decades ago, I joined City of Hope’s nascent bone marrow transplant (BMT) program, which focused on improving outcomes for patients with advanced leukemia.Â
Chaired by the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, the 24th Cancer Centers Informatics Society (Ci4CC) Symposium will convene the nation’s leading designated and community cancer centers with a central focus on advancing precision oncology.
The fight against lung cancer is evolving, with groundbreaking research shedding light on the intricate interplay between biology, environment, and health disparities.Â
City of Hope has developed and deployed HopeLLM, a proprietary generative AI platform that addresses critical operational challenges in hospitals while advancing personalized cancer care.Â
The landscape of cancer care is evolving rapidly, with growing recognition that optimal patient outcomes require a whole-person care approach that goes beyond cytotoxic and targeted therapies.Â
In cancer care, imaging has become a marvel of modern medicine. Advances in scanner technology, reconstruction algorithms, contrast agents, and diagnostic protocols have radically improved our ability to detect, track, and understand disease. Clinically, imaging is fast, accurate, and central to decision-making.Â
The intersection of diabetes, obesity and cancer represents an important and underappreciated challenge in medicine. Apart from smoking, overweight is now the leading modifiable risk factor for cancer. With the global epidemic of overweight and diabetes driving cancer incidence across multiple organ sites, understanding the metabolic underpinnings of this relationship has never been more critical.
The landscape of cancer care in America faces critical challenges: geographic disparities in access, socioeconomic barriers to advanced treatments and the increasing complexity of precision medicine that outpaces individual providers’ ability to stay current. At City of Hope, we are addressing these systemic issues through a bold expansion that brings world-class cancer care and research closer to where patients live.
